Women and Children

Despite what you see on the news, the situation in Palestine is not just the Israeli Army (with it's Canadian, French, American, British soldiers) against scary, bearded Palestinian Militants. Women and children often are at the receiving end of the former's brutality.

Today after Hamas radio asked for women to demonstrate against the latest Israeli invasion of Gaza, these same women marched towards an-Nasser mosque in Beit Hanoun and acted as a human shield - on their own free will - to help Palestinian "militants" held inside the mosque by the Israeli army. The Israelis, in a fashion that we've seen time and time again, opened fire.

One 40 year old woman is dead - and dozens are injured. BBC has reported that another woman has since also died of her wounds. More than 20 people have been killed in Gaza by the Israeli army in the past three days (including a child) as they relaunch an assault on the strip of land and it's inhabitants - some of the poorest people in the world. Israeli Human Rights Group Bet'selem has reported that 300 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza by the Army since Gilad Shalit (from France) was captured a few months ago.

So keep in mind, as you listen to the Israelis try to spin the story of their soldiers shooting unarmed middle aged women in order to extra-judiciously assassinate men they think might have fired rockets from Gaza into Israel (even though they rarely hit anything) that there is no excuse for this. That Israel is again committing horrible acts of violence. And that it continues to go unaddressed by us in "the West" because he think that we are not involved. We are involved.

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Also remember that violence against the Palestinian people happens VERY DAY and goes unreported here. How about children trying to get to school in Hebron...

The Israelis, needing to protect the Fundamentalist Jewish Settlers in Hebron (see "Hebron" post from July) from the dangerous textbooks of these Palestinian children refuse them access to their school. So they conduct, as an act of defiance, their class in front of the illegal checkpoint.

Later, pubescent boys are beaten and arrested in the streets as they confront the Israeli occupying Army. So threatening those young boys are, with their backpacks and their shifty teenage eyes. Thank god those soldiers have machine guns and bullet proof vests.

If you don't think that Hebron, with it's thousands of soldiers and militant, fundamentalist Jewish Settlers looks bad... check out what they do to Christian Peacemaker Teams and UN International Observers. Or if you want to see some more proof of the difficulties Palestinian children face trying to get to school watch some of the videos provided through the Tel Rumieda Project (an organization dedicated to monitoring Jewish Settlements in Hebron).

http://www.telrumeidaproject.org/video.html